Terminal
by Linneam
Summary: Hazel insisted I be the one to read Augustus' last words to her. I didn't want to. I didn't not want to either, really, but to read her eulogy, to write one... I wasn't ready for her to go. But the world's not a wish granting factory, right


**Nothing you recognize is mine.**

**This is my first TFioS fanfic. I hope you guys like it! Love or hate, review and let me know, por favor?**

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Hazel insisted that I was the only one who could accurately read Augustus's last words. I didn't want to. I didn't _not_ want to either, really, but to read her eulogy, to write one myself... I wasn't ready for her to go. But the world's not a wish granting factory, right? So, I had to be.

She asked me ten days ago. Four days ago, I got the call.

It was sunny. It was effing sunny, and I got the call. Who dies at two o'clock in the afternoon? It's supposed to happen late at night, you know? When it's dark and hopeless, and you can go back to sleep and hope and pray that it's a nightmare. It's _supposed_ to be a nightmare. Or, if it _has _to be during the day, it could at least be a sad, rainy day that no one wants to remember anyway because it's nothing worth remembering in the first place. _No one_ should die on a beautiful, sunny day.

The call came from her phone; it was her Hectic Glow ringtone that pulled me out of Counterinsurgence IV. I just assumed it was her. Then I picked up and heard the sobbing. There was just this moaning and these stupid, horrible, gut-wrenching wails. Her dad never actually said the words. I hung up before he could. I did not need to hear that Hazel Grace Lancaster was no longer experiencing person-hood.

I screamed. I threw my phone. I cursed her for leaving and Augustus for being out of basketball trophies to destroy, and I tried to convince my mom to buy me a carton of eggs and just let me go. She wouldn't. It wouldn't have helped anyway. _Nothing _helped. It was just a bunch of damn pain that wanted to be felt.

For once in my life, I couldn't cry. I was too pissed.

The next six days passed in a blur. I don't really remember them. I remember being angry, and then I was at the funeral, listening to strangers talk about how sweet she was, how she lit up their lives… For once in my life, I was thankful that I couldn't see. I didn't want to watch the countless people- people who hadn't thought to check on her for years- sitting there, crying over a person they surrendered the privilege to know long before she was gone. I didn't want to know.

"Now Hazel's friend Isaac is going to say a few words."

I stood up. I didn't really notice anything; I didn't _feel_ anything. I couldn't.

"Hi. My name's Isaac. I met Hazel at support group right here, in the _literal heart of Jesus_."

We both hated this place, I add silently.

"Hazel also met her boyfriend in this very room."

He hated it here too.

"She wanted nothing more than for Augustus Waters to deliver her eulogy. Unfortunately, he was unable to attend today, but he left me a few words to say on his behalf."

I'd memorized them, but I held the pen-dented pages in my fingers anyway. Even without seeing them, they helped me connect to him, to her. I said his words, verbatim, but I couldn't leave it there. I wasn't done being Hazel's friend yet.

"If you can't tell, he loved her very much; she loved him too. I loved- love, present tense- them both.

"Augustus was my best friend. He died two years ago, and my life has kind of been hell since. Don't get me wrong, I love life, but I never thought there would be something I understood less than a world without Augustus Waters in it. I was wrong. I never wanted to imagine a world without him, but until about a month ago, I never realized how much worse the idea of a world without Augustus_ and_ Hazel could be, and let me tell you, it sucks even more.

"Hazel made the comment one day that funerals are for the living, but she hated bullshit. And since I'm living, I'm saying this because _I_ need to. For her.

"People have this grand idea that terminal cancer kids go out in style. They breathe their last breath with a smile on their face, or they stay a, 'hero until the end,' never getting tired of fighting, never being angry, never having those teenage mood swings everyone else seems to be entitled to. And I know you guys want to believe that those things described her, but sometimes, they didn't. She got angry. Sometimes, she was just pissed because her lungs refused to be lungs and because she couldn't get up to pee by herself and because she had to cast away her life before she could even cast a vote. And she had every right to be.

"Up until the end, Hazel had good days, days where she'd engage you in some witty debate, joke about things taking her breath away… She had good days. But she had bad days too, because she was human. We are _all_ human, and we all go through it. I don't know about everyone else out there, but I'm angry right now because we have to be here. I'm angry because I have to be in a world where she isn't anymore. It's only been a few days, and I know that missing her hasn't even really started. And it pisses me off.

"But I said all that with a reason. I'm not here to convince you that Hazel was always moody and tell you how mad I am that she's gone. I'm going to say that Hazel was- is- a hero, but that it has _nothing_ to do with the fact that she's dead. Hazel's been a hero for a long time because she took the time to notice the Universe, and she didn't demand that it notice her back. She did her best to minimize the damage she did to the world, and at least for me, she made my world better because of it.

"She and Augustus gave me hope. I always believed in true love, but it kept falling apart right in front of me, and then they met, and even after he was gone, I could see it in her. Well, metaphorically. She was all about the metaphor; they both were. She was my hero for that, too. And I think that wherever they are, in that Somewhere with a capital S, that they're there together, because every love story deserves an always.

"Hazel wasn't a hero because she was terminal. We are _all_ terminal; we all have this finite amount of time on this earth, and it's always going to be too damn short. Hazel is a hero because she recognized that, and she did her best not to get in its way. I want to be in its way. I want to extend that finite amount by a few more hours or days or years… For Hazel, for her parents, for me… For this world, because _no one_ deserves to live in a world without Hazel Grace Lancaster in it.

"She and I were supposed to watch a movie last night. It was this corny chick flick with a supermodel who falls in love with some homely boy who dies of excess personhood. I'll never watch it now.

"God. I already miss her, and it sucks. That's all."

I didn't listen to the next eulogy. I was too enamored with the reality of her existence, too confused by its lack-thereof. For as much as I said, there was infinitely more I didn't. I didn't explain that she was the only person who understood what it was like to lose Augustus; that she became my best friend, my sister; that I loved her. That I never realized that Support Group Hazel, Night-of-the-broken-trophies Hazel, Not-my-evil-ex-girlfriend Hazel, _Hazel_ was going to be one of the two biggest influences in my life-that's-not-a-cancer-story.

The clicking of heels told me the final speaker was on her way to the lectern, on her way to give another phony speech. I sighed. Hazel didn't sigh back.

Finally, I cried.

**END.**


End file.
